A very simple recipe but resulting in a lovely cookie, or biscuit, with a subtle lemon flavour is the recipe today.
I do love biscuits that are crunchy but not hard and that is what these are. With a lovely light lemon flavour too they are ideal to eat as a snack with a cup of tea, or coffee.
The recipe is very simple, but it takes a little while as the dough must be chilled for quite a long time. I kept mine very simple, using no icing/frosting, but adding some to the biscuits would give them an extra dimension in terms of texture and flavour, if desired. If you want to cover some with icing you could use royal icing and pipe in patterns, or cover the entire top of the biscuit. Some icing sugar mixed with a little lemon juice until a thick but runny consistency could be drizzled in patterns over the tops too.
But for mine I limited myself to just sprinkling some granulated sugar on top of a few, just to demonstrate that.
My biscuits baked perfectly in 17 minutes, giving me a lovely crunch as I bit into them. The flavour of lemon, enhanced by adding just a little lemon extract, was very good too. These are some biscuits that will become a go to recipe for me.
- 227g(2 sticks) chilled and cubed unsalted butter
- 200g(1 cup) caster sugar
- 350g(2 1/2 cups plain flour)
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 medium egg(large in USA0
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp lemon extract
- grated zest of one lemon
- granulated sugar for sprinkling if desired
Method:
- Place the caster sugar into a food processor.
- Add the butter and beat for about 30 seconds, scraping down the bowl if necessary, until the butter and sugar are incorporated and come together in a large clump/ball.
- Add the egg and the lemon extract and juice.
- Process until the wet ingredients are incorporated into the butter/sugar paste.
- Place the baking powder, baking soda into the flour and also add the lemon zest.
- Stir around to get those ingredients mixed into the flour.
- Add that mixture to the food processor and pulse until everything starts to clump in grainy lumps.
- Tip the mixture onto the work surface and use your hands to pull together, kneading just a little, until the dough is formed. It will be very soft.
- Divide the dough into two pieces and roll each one out, between sheets or parchment paper, until the dough is 1/8th inch/3 cm thick.
- Place the dough, still in between the parchment sheets, onto a baking tray and chill in the fridge for at least 90 minutes, so that it goes very stiff.
- Preheat the oven to 150C/300F.
- Line a couple of baking trays with parchment paper.
- Remove one piece of dough from the fridge and peel off the top sheet or parchment paper. Then place it on top, loosely.
- Turn the whole thing over and peel off the second piece of parchment paper.
- Use cookie cutters, or whatever shape, and size you wish, and cut out shapes. placing each one on a baking, leaving a gap between each.
- Repeat the process with the second piece of chilled dough. Note that the excess dough can be rolled flat as before and chilled again, to make more cookies.
- If you wish sprinkle some granulated sugar on the top of the shapes.
- Bake in the oven for 15 to 17 minutes, until the biscuits just begin to change colour.
- Remove from the oven and leave for 2 minutes, then transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Ice the tops, if you want to.